Can I just say a big fat nope to including these? Because people might actually mess their systems up if they use my XFCE guides, and Thunar isn't as user-friendly OOTB, outside of an XFCE installation. I would rather perfect the process (somehow, later) before I consider them reference materials because how both of those threads are at the moment is a joke in comparison to what I want them to be.

The problem is that this type of integration between different DEs is always very fickle and constantly in need of being revised. I think they are cool nerdy oneshot exercises for a particular set of versions of both DEs, but that can quickly go sour with an update to either. And consequently are a real source of system instability that should not be encouraged on a general index, regardless of the current warning on that index. They are, of course, otherwise always welcomed as independent posts on the Tips, Tricks and Tutorials forum.

On a more personal level, they constitute a type of experimentation I no longer practice, for a few years now. There is simply no way I can assure a stable system and any victories are always short-lived. And because of the way DEs tend to converge their features, the small benefits of integrating a tool from another DE for a small set of its added features are simply not worth it. It is not just a matter of being constantly forced to finding new ways of maintaining the tool integrated. Oftentimes the effort has actually to be abandoned because the updated DE made it impossible, reducing to naught a history of previous efforts and the workflow benefits they were providing. The MATE desktop in particular was chosen by me exactly for its enduring workflow coming back from the Gnome 2 days and mimicking the traditional desktop paradigm that predates it. So how can I justify these type of integrated tools, if sometime in the near future I am forced to abandon some workflow because I can no longer integrate a tool?

I find theming a more interesting proposal. Bringing both my MATE and Xfce desktops into a completely identical look is more exciting to me (*) than trying to integrate a Xfce tool into MATE or the other way around.

--(*) although it can be equally frustrating sometimes, because of certain DE or GUI toolkit maintainers decisions. But that's another topic and a rant I won't go into.

I agree with you. I screwed off trying to maintain use of nemo because new Nemo with Compiz 0.8 breaks stuff and I would have to use an older version which is a load of bullocks and difficult to maintain without apt taking a big fat poo over my work. Everything you said is exactly what I was saying, condensed to a simple "I wrote this but I don't like it."

However I will say if someone does commit to using xfce4-desktop they're also kind of locked into thunar so it's not a complete system-breaker, it just forces constraints upon the end user; it's easier to begin with xubuntu and add mate-panel by itself rather than beginning with ubuntu-mate-desktop and installing the entire XFCE4 toolkit, but TBH if I were doing that I would stick with Ubuntu MATE and use xfce4-panel instead because I just like how XFCE's panel system works.

If somebody can make a separator for MATE which serves the purpose of being an expander, as well then I would have absolutely no issues with mate-panel between resolutions for my HTPC but at the moment that isn't a thing.

Posting this a little late, but it had come to my attention the tut index was created months ago and is only recently becoming live when potentially half the stuff in there is out of date. I am going to attempt revising my works as necessary to see what breaks, and what doesn't when looking over my own guides.

I can already tell you there are no changes to how compiz 0.8 works, and there has been little progress to improve any bugs associated with its use.